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Everyone hopes for a letter—to attend the Estuary, the Pines, the Glades. To attend the Meadows. These are the secret places where only the best and brightest go, to learn to burn even brighter.
When Eleanor gets her letter, she knows she’s freed from her hardscrabble life by the sea, in a country ravaged by climate disaster and war. But despite the Meadows’ luminous facilities, endless fields, and pretty things, it keeps a dark secret: its purpose is to reform the students inside, to condition them against their attractions, to show them that one way of life is the only way to survive. Anything else, they’re told, will topple a society already on the brink of collapse.
Five years later, Eleanor is an adjudicator, making sure the Meadows’ former students don't stray from the life they’ve been conditioned to live. But Eleanor can't escape her past, or thoughts of the girl she once loved. Because that girl isn't here anymore. What happened to her could be no one but Eleanor's fault. And as secrets emerge that set Eleanor on a dangerous but determined search for the truth, she knows if she's not careful, it could be her fate too.
A queer, YA Handmaid's Tale meets Never Let Me Go about a dystopian society bent on relentless conformity, and the struggle of one girl to save herself and those she loves from a life of lies
Author: Stephanie Oakes
Paperback Published 28 November 2023 448 pages
"A story of pain, injustice, love, resistance, and hope, this glorious book will lodge inside you and make you feel everything.” —Helena Fox, award-winning author of How It Feels to Float